


Standing By

by grumpybell



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, But not really angsty?, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, It's actually pretty freakin' fluffy, Lovers to Friends to Lovers, POV Bellamy Blake, Post-Break Up, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-02-21
Packaged: 2018-05-22 09:38:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6074344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grumpybell/pseuds/grumpybell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"In a weird way, being dumped by Clarke Griffin is the best thing that ever happened to him. Yeah, he still finds himself wishing he could see her, talk to her, kiss her, but it makes him realize he really wants to be the sort of person Clarke Griffin wouldn't leave behind in the first place. "</p>
            </blockquote>





	Standing By

“ _I counted the stars tonight._

_Oh, how they shine so bright._

_I gathered them all so we perfectly align._

_While we gaze from far away,_

_and separately watch the day_

_come rising across the horizon in our minds.”_

 

Clarke breaks up with him on Saturday in August and he hates her for it. She broke his heart. The only consolation he has in the whole thing is that she's leaving for college the next day, so he won't have to see her around. It doesn't feel like much because, well, she's the one who broke up with him, he _wants_ to see her around. Even worse, Octavia is on her side. She takes one look at Bellamy sprawled out on the couch in a pair of ratty sweatpants with a beer in hand and says,

“Honestly, it can't have been that much of a surprise.”

He glares balefully at his sister. “Well, we had talked about long distance.”

Octavia's eyebrows shoot up. “You think that's why she broke up with you?”

And the honest answer to that is yes, and he can't think of why it shouldn't be (which might be the beer or might be denial), so he just ends up repeating himself.

“We talked about long distance,” he says, dull.

“Yeah,” Octavia says, “last year, when you still made her happy.”

And Bellamy _knows_ he was a shit boyfriend. He knows, because Clarke's the first person he's ever bothered to try for like that. And _God_ , how she made him want to try, with her soft smiles and the way she looked at him like he was something good. Like he was someone better than he knows he is. But, the truth is, he was _always_ a shit boyfriend, and she hadn't broken up with him in the past two years, so it has to be about the distance, right?

Octavia takes pity on him. “She got tired, Bell.”

“Of what?” he asks, and then wishes he hadn't because he's pretty sure the answer to that question is _of you_.

“Of everything being so hard, obviously. It shouldn't have been that hard and she loved you, right, so she kept trying, but you never really did, so she got tired and she gave up.” Octavia shrugs like she hasn't just dropped a bomb all over his view of his relationship.

He can't really think of anything to say back to that, so he just takes another swig of his beer and sinks a little deeper into the sofa.

He thinks about it (her) a lot that first year, partially because he misses her and partially because he seems to be the only one who didn't see it coming. When he mentions their break up (he's still really fucking mad that Clarke ducked out immediately afterward and he'd been the one who had to break the news to everyone they knew over and over) no one actually looks surprised. They seem to all have mastered the same expression, which is somehow both sympathetic and a little condescending, like they pity him for thinking he and Clarke might work out. He knows a lot of it is probably just because they started dating Clarke's junior year of high school and high school couples often don't survive graduation, but it feels worse than that.

So he spends an inordinate amount of time trying to analyze his relationship with Clarke and why it had blindsided him when it failed. The thing is, their relationship was always rocky. Everything between them was intense, the initial flirtation, the disagreements, the sex. He and Clarke just didn't do things halfway. And maybe because it had always been that way, screaming at each other one moment and making out the next, he didn't see it when things changed.

They'd always argued (starting with the first time they met, when Clarke had challenged his analysis on Roman Democracy in history class her sophomore year of high school) and they never really stopped. Somewhere along the line, though, things had shifted. What had been heated debates about Harry Potter, had evolved into arguments about what he was going to do with his life, what he _could_ do with his life, his relationship with Octavia, Clarke's relationship with her mom, her money, _real_ things. They never used to argue about that.

He's a little bit mad when he starts to realize that Clarke was right to break up with him, because it still hurts, and it's easier to just blindly blame her for his pain. But the truth is, he doesn't much like who he is right now (19, not in school, working a couple of dead end jobs, mad at the world in general, wallowing) so he can't really expect Clarke to like him either. She'd always had big dreams for both of them and he just hadn't felt like he could afford to dream big, but he could be doing something _more_ and Clarke had seen it and he'd kind of been a dick to her about it.

In a weird way, being dumped by Clarke Griffin is the best thing that ever happened to him. Yeah, he still finds himself wishing he could see her, talk to her, kiss her, but it makes him realize he really wants to be the sort of person Clarke Griffin wouldn't leave behind in the first place.

The school that gives him the best scholarships is two states away and he waffles about it for days, because he might be trying to actually improve himself, but it's Octavia's senior year and it isn't really fair to ask her to move. She settles the issue for him.

“You have to go, Bell,” she tells him, arms crossed, warrior face on.

“I can't make you move. I can defer for a year.”

“ _Or_ you can go and I can live with Monty for a year. His parents already said it would be okay.” It takes him another week to give in, but in the end, he agrees. If he doesn't go now, he probably won't ever go. He wants to go. He wants to be something.

College turns out to be a lot better than high school, not that he's surprised. It helps that no one here knows him or his baggage or the fact that he spent the first five months after Clarke broke up with him sleeping with any girl who'd have him. He's not about to claim he handled the situation very well. He has friends here, Miller and Lincoln and Murphy, none of whom know that he never used to wear his glasses in public or openly express his opinions of the Bolsheviks when sober.

He's kind of come to terms with the fact that he's always going to love Clarke Griffin. And it's not some weird pining thing that Octavia seems to be worried it is; he knows that the Clarke chapter in his life is over and that's okay (mostly), but she was the first girl he ever loved and he'd definitely never be here without her, so yeah, he still loves her. It's just a part of him, like the fact that he hates tomato slices or that his hair is never going to behave. He's doing okay on the romance front, too. He's dated a couple of girls since he started school and nothing has really stuck, but he feels good about his choices and himself and that he could actually do it, be a good boyfriend, if he found someone. He's not in any sort of hurry.

So when he's two years into his degree and he literally runs into Clarke Griffin on the sidewalk three blocks from his apartment, it's safe to say he's a little thrown. To be fair, she looks just as surprised as he is, lips parted, eyes wide. They both just sort of stand there in silence for a few moments before Bellamy manages to find his voice.

“Hey,” he says, and wonders if there's protocol for running into your exgirlfriend who you haven't seen in two and half years about six states away from where you ever imagined she'd be.

“You're wearing your glasses,” is what she says, and Bellamy feels stupidly relieved that if he's failing at this conversation, she's failing even harder.

“Uh, yeah.” He touches the frames. “I do that now.”

Her cheeks have gone pink and he suspects that she'd just blurted out the first thing that had come to mind. He's not doing much better; he's just watching her looking at the ground and chewing on her lip and she's just _Clarke._

“So what're you doing here?” he asks, wincing a little at how transparent and awkward and maybe a little accusatory it sounds.

“I, uh... I kind of realized I don't want to be a doctor.”

It's not an answer to his question and it takes him a moment of blinking steadily at her to allow himself to believe that those are actual words that have come out of Clarke Griffin's mouth. It was naïve of him, obviously, to not realize that in two and half years, she's probably changed a lot too.

“I know,” she says, with a wry twist of her lips. “That's what everyone's face looks like when I tell them.” She shoves her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket and shrugs her shoulders self consciously. Her body language, at least, is something that's familiar to him, Clarke folding in on herself, putting up walls. He hadn't realized he remembered those details about her.

“Anyway,” she breaks the silence, “I transferred to an art program here and I just moved last week.” She looks conflicted for a split second before barreling on, brave as he remembers. “I didn't know you lived here.”

He knows. The expression of pure shock she'd worn when she met his eyes had been enough to tell him that. He shrugs.

“Good scholarships.”

There's a curious look breaking on her face, one he doesn't know how to read. “What are you studying?”

“History,” he tells her, and for some reason Clarke looks a little like she might cry, which he doesn't understand, exactly, but well... Seeing her feels like a lot.

“Greeks and Romans,” she says softly, and he may have changed a lot in their time apart, but there are so many things about him that she knows, that remain constant and true.

“Yeah,” he bites back a smile and is halfway to gathering the courage to ask her something real, when her phone begins pinging furiously. She pulls it out of her back pocket and he watches her face go from surprised to annoyed to resigned.

“Sorry.” She gives him a tentative smile and he wants nothing more to pull a real one from her, wide and bright like the ones he remembers. “I'm late to this thing.”

“Right.” He tries not to shuffle awkwardly or say anything he's going to regret. “I should go too.” He'd been on his way home, so he's not really missing anything, but it's one of the only normal things he can think to say.

“It was good to see you,” Clarke says, but it's the voice she uses for niceties and he's always seen through it. That, at least, hasn't changed.

“You too.” And they move awkwardly past each other, her going one way, him the other. He gets five yards before his feet bring him to a halt. He should keep walking, keep moving. He's doing _well_ and dragging up old shit with Clarke is probably not the way to continue to do so. He turns around.

“Clarke!”

She faces him slowly, too far away for him to really make out her expression.

“If you need any advice about the area or anything, you should call me. My number's the same.” He keeps his gaze steady, heart in his throat, until he sees her nod, and then he starts back to his apartment, trying to take full deep breaths.

 

“ _And now I know, my heart is strong._

_Where you belong, is by my side._

_So will you hold?_

_'Cause time is cold,_

_but in your soul I'm standing by.”_

 

It's slow, becoming friends with Clarke again. Slow, but terrifying. He'd meant it, when he'd told her she could call, but he hadn't really expected her to. And, the first time she does, it's clear it's pretty much out of necessity. The call comes in late afternoon on a Friday while he's in the middle of annotating a book for class, and when he looks down at his phone to see Clarke's name, his heart just sort of stops. He nearly misses answering the call in time out of pure shock.

“Hello?” He manages, throat feeling a little stuck up.

“Hi.” Clarke sounds sheepish and something else that he can't define.

“What's up?” he asks lamely, like it's normal to get a phone call from her.

“I...” He hears her take a breath. “I kind of have to take the bus. And this route map makes no sense to me and I'm not sure where I am.”

He blinks, surprised. Clarke taking the bus is _not_ something he ever thought he'd see, and as the pieces begin to slot into place, he realizes that the other tone in Clarke's voice is suppressed fear. He and Clarke had only been dating for two months when her dad was killed in a bus crash. As far as he knows, she hasn't been on one since. He hopes his surprise doesn't color his tone when he responds.

“Do you know what street or stop you're at?”

“Um. No, hold on-” and he hears muffled voices, which he thinks means Clarke is asking someone. He wonders if the term shock is too dramatic for what he's feeling. He'd _told_ her to call, he reminds himself. He just... Clarke left him for a reason, he'd kind of assumed she wasn't really looking for anything from him, not even friendship.

He almost misses it when she comes back to the phone with information on where she is. His reaction happens so fast, he doesn't have time to think about it and reconsider.

“I'll be there in twenty minutes.” What the hell is he doing?

“You don't have to, I just-”

“-It's fine. See you soon.” He doesn't even start to panic properly until he sees her through the window of the bus at they're pulling up to the stop. What is he _doing_?

She looks surprised to see him, even though she knew he was coming, and he can tell she's nervous from the way she's shifting her weight between her feet. She grants him a weak smile.

“So,” he says, adjusting his glasses and stowing his phone in his pocket. “Where are you trying to get to?”

Clarke tucks some hair behind her ear. “Public library?”

“Cool,” he gestures to his left and starts to walk. “That's on the blue route.”

Clarke is so tense on the bus, he thinks she forgets to be uncomfortable with their situation, sitting with one leg bouncing and her eyes on the floor. He can tell she's grinding her teeth. He probably shouldn't, it's just he _knows_ why this is hard for her, and she's still _Clarke_ , so he drapes a cautious arm over her shoulder. Her leg goes still and he holds his breath, but then she relaxes, sinks a little closer to him.

He can feel the shuddering breath she takes when the bus doors close, her body going rigid.

“Why are we taking the bus?” he asks, voice quiet.

Clarke closes her eyes. “My mom's not thrilled about the whole art thing, so she cut me off. I'm spending all my money on school and my apartment, so I can't afford a car.”

He resists the urge to reach up and work the tangles out of her hair with his fingers like he used to when she was upset. It's weird how quickly things like that come back to him. Instead, he taps her elbow to get her to look at him.

“You have a bus map?”

She nods and pulls one out of her purse.

“And a pen?”

“You have one behind your ear,” she tells him, and he reaches up and realizes she's right. He has a bad habit of losing pens while he's doing homework and this is one of the reasons why. They're at least five stops from the library, so he takes the opportunity to start explaining the bus maps and routes to her, circling his favorite stops and adding a giant X to the ones he avoids at all costs. He glances up once, to find Clarke watching his face, rather than the map, but she looks away and nudges him to continue.

It's not easy, exactly, after that. It's just... happening. First it's just the bus, but then it's coffee, and later it's Clarke calling him about her history homework and it's just happening. They end up riding the bus together a lot, because Clarke has the world's worst sense of direction and Bellamy knows she still hates being on the bus alone, whether or not she'll admit it. He tells himself he'd do it for anyone, because what sort of shit person would he have to be to make her ride the bus by herself when her dad died that way, but... He probably wouldn't.

He doesn't realize he's actually _friends_ with Clarke until she shows up at his apartment one Thursday evening when he's studying for a big exam just to bring him snacks. It's stupid, because now that he's realized it, it's pretty clear they've been friends for a while. It's just, he hasn't applied the term “friend” to Clarke since he was 17 and trying to get the courage up to ask her out and arguing with her about Archimedes in Honors Calculus.

“How do you know where I live?” he says by way of greeting, kind of immediately regretting it, but Clarke only rolls her eyes and pushes past him. He follows her, a little dazed, into the kitchen. She's already got his fridge open and is stowing away a six pack of beer.

“I asked Miller. I tried to get him to help me out with the beer selection, but he was like 0% helpful. You'd think his bartending job would give him better taste.” She dumps the grocery bag out on his kitchen table. It's mostly a ridiculous amount of chocolate and the pull-apart kind of Twizzlers which are his favorites.

She looks up at him for the first time and her nose scrunches up. “Are you wearing Nyan Cat pajama pants?”

He is. “Octavia thought they would be funny,” he defends himself. “I wasn't expecting visitors.”

“Clearly.” Clarke tosses a pack of Twizzlers at him, which he only barely manages to hold onto and takes up residence on his sofa. He stands in his kitchen for a few moments after her, feeling a little off balance, before he goes back to studying.

She's mostly not distracting, sitting crosslegged on his sofa, watching youtube videos on her phone and nibbling on a chocolate bar. She's not doing anything loud or annoying, but she's _there_ in his space, like it's a normal everyday thing and it does his head in a little bit.

But like it always does, his work starts to absorb him and the next thing he knows Clarke's resting a hand on his back as she leans over to set a cup of coffee on the table next to his pile of notes. He rubs at his eyes, knocking his glasses askew, and gratefully gulps down the coffee.

“What time is it?” he asks, rolling his shoulders to get some of the stiffness out.

“A little past midnight.”

“Shit, really?” He blinks up at her. “God, you should go home and get some sleep. Wait, I should take you, the bus isn't safe after ten alone, and-” he makes to stand up, and Clarke pushes him back down by his shoulders.

“It's fine. I don't have class tomorrow.” She disappears back into the kitchen and comes back with a cup of coffee of her own.

“What time is your first class tomorrow?” she asks.

“Not until two.” He should probably try a little harder to convince her to go home, but it's nice to have someone else around.

“Good. You need to get at least eight hours of sleep,” she instructs, her face oddly serious. He's going to give her a hard time about it, but then he's struck by a thought that's been evading him all night and he turns back his papers, shuffling them on the table in search of his pen.

Clarke leans over and plucks his pen out from behind his ear. “Honestly, Bell,” she says, handing it to him and returning to the sofa. He's in the middle of writing down pretty much the best analysis he's thought of all night when he realizes she'd called him _Bell_.

So far, they'd avoided old pet names for each other. They hadn't talked about it, they haven't really talked explicitly about _anything_ from before, but he's had to bite back the urge to tack _princess_ onto the ends of some of his sentences. It just doesn't seem appropriate anymore, not if they're pretending that the romantic part of their relationship never happened.

He glances over at Clarke to find her already looking at him.

“What?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “Nothing... You're just... exactly who I always thought you'd be.” She turns back to her phone and leaves his head a mess of confusion.

 

“ _I have waited a thousand years,_

_but now that tomorrow's here,_

_I will shout from the mountaintop,_

_'Our hearts belong near.'_

_And we've traveled land and sea,_

_our beacon the love we keep,_

_but when we unite,_

_this all will have been our dream.”_

 

Octavia finds out about it because Clarke posts a photo of him on her Facebook. In it, he's wearing the Nyan Cat pajama pants and his Arkadia High t-shirt, leaning over his notebook, and he's on his third cup of coffee and it shows. He hadn't realized she'd taken the photo and he would have tried (and likely failed) to stop her from posting it because, well, he's not trying to be the badass cool kid he was in high school, but he'd like to maintain _some_ dignity.

Octavia calls him fifteen minutes later, before he even knows the photo exists.

“What the actual _fuck_ , Bell!” He's used to Octavia's highly inappropriate greetings by now and he's given up on trying to correct her.

“Hello to you too.”

“Am I going to get an _explanation_ , Bellamy?” Octavia demands. He doesn't know what she's on about, but that's true about half the time anyway.

“For what?” He doesn't mean it to be upsetting, but Octavia lets out a little noise that he's pretty sure is a suppressed shriek of frustration.

“Clarke _Griffin!_ ” Octavia screams into the phone. Bellamy's stomach drops.

“How do you know about that?” On second thought, that was a terrible thing to say. He realizes this, even before Octavia starts cursing at him about it.

“Get on Facebook, you fucking dumb ass.” He does. He's tagged in the picture and it already has about 30 likes. Bellamy pretty much never gets on Facebook and when he does, he almost never posts anything. The result is that there's only a handful of pictures of him on there anyway, and usually they get a couple of likes. But this is on Clarke's page, and it has _exploded_. He sighs. He's seen Clarke four times this week and she takes a photo of him the _one_ time he's dressed like a five year old.

“Why are people even liking that photo? It's the worst!” He complains.

“ _Bellamy_.” Octavia's voice has gone icy and he knows that if he doesn't give her an explanation in the next five minutes, she's going to show up and kick his ass even if she has to drive eight hours from college to do it.

“I just ran into her. She's living here now and it just kind of happened.”

“You ran into her in your Nyan Cat pajamas?” Octavia's tone is disbelieving.

“No. It was a few weeks ago. We're kind of friends now.”

Octavia snorts. “You are _not_.”

“I'm pretty sure we are.”

“You have no clue how to be friends with Clarke, remember? She's _Clarke_.” He hates when her voice goes all exasperated and condescending like this. He's always tempted to mention it, but he's got a sneaking suspicion of who she learned it from and he's not willing to go there.

“Yeah, and I got over her, remember?”

“Okay, I'm going to pretend I believe that for a second and move on the fact that you two argued _all the time_.”

“Look, I know it's hard to believe, but it's fine. We're better now.” And it's true, he realizes. He hadn't really thought about it, but he'd been friends with Clarke before, back when they were in high school, and it had never been like this. There'd always been a struggle involved, all consuming and exhausting and constant. They just aren't like that anymore. There's something calmer and gentler and just different about them now.

Secretly, he suspects that it has a lot to do with him. He knows the sort of guy he was in high school isn't really who he had wanted to be. He'd had a big chip on his shoulder and a tendency to jump first and think later. He hasn't completely gotten rid of either of those things, but they're under control and he's not letting them hold him back anymore. Half of the arguments he and Clarke had had just before the end of their relationship had been about his attitude towards things, so it's not surprising things are better now.

“I just want you to be careful, Bell,” Octavia says quietly.

“Of what?” he asks, stubborn.

She sighs. “You know exactly what.” And then she hangs up. End of conversation, apparently.

Clarke comes over to get drunk with him on the anniversary of her dad's death. He's aware it's probably a bad idea. Even Miller had told him so, and Miller tends to stay out of Bellamy's personal business, just sighing and shaking his head a lot. So far, Bellamy's avoided intoxication in his new friendship with Clarke. It seems like the safest bet, considering their history.

She's clearly already a little tipsy when she shows up, brandishing a bottle of wine at him. He takes it, and heads towards the kitchen. Wine really isn't his thing, but again, that's probably good because he doesn't really trust drunk him not to say something incredibly stupid and probably overemotional.

He's never actually seen drunk Clarke before. She hadn't been real into alcohol back in high school. He had always been pretty sure part of that was that she didn't really like to break rules, but now he's less sure. He's only seen Clarke drink twice this whole time they've been friends, so maybe it's just really not her thing.

She lies down on the floor in the middle of his living room and refuses to move, so he joins her, staring at his ceiling, which is blank and white and nothing special. He's not drunk, not like Clarke, but he's a little fuzzier than he'd meant to be.

“I kind of freaked out when I first saw you again,” she says, speaking upwards and not looking at him when he turns his head.

“Yeah, me too.” He'd sort of resigned himself to the fact he was never going to see Clarke again, and then there she was. Now, it seems impossible that they wouldn't find their way back to each other.

“I was really convinced you'd hate me,” she says, voice quiet.

“Why?” he asks, but he knows why. He'd been pretty torn up when she left him and everyone knew. She probably did too.

“I hate all my exes,” she says.

He elbows her. “Rude.”

“Excluding you, obviously,” she amends, smiling.

“Better.”

“I'm really bad at relationships, it turns out,” she sighs. “I got _worse_ after you, if you can believe that.”

“We weren't that bad,” he says. Actually, they were kind of great (at least when they weren't fighting) and they're better now and they'd be even better if- He cuts off his own thoughts. He really can't go there.

“Yeah, looking back I can see that. But you were my first relationship and I didn't really have a frame of reference.”

“So what happened after?”

“Finn.” Clarke says his name like it tastes bad. “He had this whole idealistic, save the world, social justice thing going. And I thought that was great, you know, that he had ambition and drive and wanted things.” She doesn't say it, but he knows that those are all things that were the antithesis of who he'd been. He can see why that would have appealed to her, even if it stings a little to know she'd gone after someone who was his opposite.

“It turned out he was also a cheater,” Clarke finishes dully.

“Fuck.” It's pretty much all he can say because he has a feeling that he's way too upset about this, the idea that anyone could ever put so little value on Clarke that they would do that to her.

“And then after Finn there was Lexa.” Clarke goes silent for several long moments. “I still don't really know what happened with that. She was just this _force_ and she made me feel special. But then... It was like her opinion of me was supposed to matter more than _my_ opinion of me and I even bought in to that for a while. I was in this place where I really wanted to please her, even if it made me unhappy. And then she just left. Not a word to me. I found out through one of her other friends that she took some job offer across the country.”

“Shit, Clarke.” It seems his contribution to this evening is going to be a wide variety of expletives in varying tones. That's okay. That's probably safest.

Her voice is very quiet when she next speaks. “I still feel really bad about how I broke up with you.”

“You do?” He starts to sit up to look at her, but she's got her eyes determinedly fixed on the ceiling and he lies back down. “Why?”

“I should have done it sooner, and stayed around for the fall out. I kept thinking I could change things.”

“Me, you mean,” he murmurs, because it's what she means. She'd wanted to change him and she kept trying until she couldn't anymore.

“I'm sorry,” she says, voice small.

“I'm not.” It's something he's had a lot of time to think about. “It wasn't your job to fix me, Clarke, and I resented you for trying, back then. You were right to break up with me. I didn't appreciate it at the time, obviously, but losing you really put some things in perspective for me. I needed that. But okay, I'll give you that the timing was bad. It really sucked to have to explain it to everyone.”

Clarke sniffs, and he thinks that maybe she's crying, but it feels dangerous to turn his head and look at her, so he doesn't. He startles, a little, when her hand brushes his, but then her fingers are threaded with his and her hand is just as small and warm as he remembered.

They fall asleep on the floor and wake up early, both grumbling about different body parts. Bellamy stumbles to the kitchen to make coffee. Clarke follows him and leans on the counter and watches him fumble with the coffeemaker, cursing under his breath, before she places a hand on the small of his back and he stills.

“Wanna go to IHOP and eat out their supply of bacon?” she asks, eyes blurry and her hair tangled. And it's in this moment that he realizes that, yes, there's some part of him that was always going to love her, this girl who had been his first love, but now there's another part of him that loves her all over again, for who she is now, and that part of him is hopeful.

 

“ _And now I know, our hearts are strong._

_Where we belong is side by side._

_And so we'll hold each other close,_

_and in our souls, we're standing by.”_

 

They don't talk about it, but there's a discernible shift after that night, not just in how he feels, but in the way they are around each other. There's just a closeness that he hasn't felt with anyone since he was dating Clarke years ago and this time it's gentler. She leans her head on his shoulder on the bus and he plays with her hair while they're watching Netflix on his couch and she kisses his cheek when she leaves. It's like being on the edge of something, but not quite there, and weirdly, it doesn't make him anxious. Clarke is his best friend again. This time, loving her is an extension of that, not an alternative.

He thinks about telling her a lot. Clarke is this beautiful, amazing, caring person in his life and whether or not she loves him back (he's leaning towards not, because it had always been different for her), he _knows_ she loves him as a friend. And he feels like he should be honest with her, like if he isn't, he'll always wonder what might have happened. He doesn't _need_ her to love him like he loves her, but if she did...

It's easier to think about it than it is to say it. He tries it a couple of times, once when he's cooking dinner and she's sitting on the counter, swinging her bare feet and kicking at the backs of his knees, just to annoy him, but it doesn't make it past his lips. He tries another time while they're on the bus, Clarke liquid against his side, but it doesn't seem fair to tell her something like that in a place that she hates so much. As it is, weeks pass, and it doesn't say anything at all. He's _happy_. Clarke is in his life all the time and that's the best thing that's happened to him in years.

The day he does tell her, he doesn't plan it. They're sitting on his couch and Clarke is sketching him, her fingers messy with charcoal and her lips pressed together in concentration. She's been making him model more and more recently, but she never lets him see the results. Usually, she just gets charcoal all over every surface in his apartment and elbows him frequently as a reminder to stay still.

“We should do one of these when you're wearing your Nyan Cat pajamas,” she tells him, an amused smile on her lips. Clarke loves that the picture of him has 57 likes on Facebook. She likes to remind him that it means probably at least twice as many people saw it.

“Are you drawing my legs? I didn't prepare for this,” he says.

Clarke elbows him in the ribs and accidentally leaves a smear of charcoal down his arm. “You're the worst.”

“And yet, you keep asking me to model.”

“I don't think sitting on your sofa eating cold pop tarts really constitutes modeling.”

He throws a chunk of pop tart at her, but misses, and it disappears somewhere on the floor. She raises her eyebrows at him, and he throws another chunk, just to redeem himself. It hits her in the forehead and leaves a sticky smear of strawberry filling. There's a moment where nothing happens, and then Clarke has dumped her sketchbook on the floor and launched herself at him, hands outstretched.

He doesn't stand a chance. He doesn't know all that much about charcoal, but if it doesn't wash out of clothes, then his shirt is done for. Clarke sits back, looking smug.

“Very mature,” he tells her, tugging at the bottom hem of his shirt so he can get a better view of the damage she's done. She doesn't answer, just leans over and swipes a dark streak across his cheek with a triumphant “Ha!”

He looks up, meets her eyes, and with an abruptness that surprises even him, the words just burst out.

“I'm in love with you,” he says.

There's this sudden, swift descent into silence and it is so loud. He thinks, for a moment, that she's not going to say anything at all, that she's going to just pretend it never happened. He can live with that, he decides, because he didn't tell her to try to force anything from her. He'd told her because she deserved to know. He's preparing himself for her to say something to change the subject. What she says instead is,

“I'm in love with you too.”

“Wait, you _are_?” he asks dumbly. The expression on her face doesn't really look like love, more like nervousness.

“Obviously,” she tells him. “Why did you say it if you didn't think I'd say it back?”

“I just thought I should be honest.” Bellamy's head hurts. She _loves_ him and he mostly just feels confused. “I always assumed it was different for you. You broke up with me.”

“I didn't break up with you because I stopped loving you,” she says, sounding annoyed and very much like Clarke. “I did it because I realized I couldn't expect you to be the version of you I wanted, even if I wanted it _for_ you. And then I ran into you here and that's...” Her voice hitches. “I ran into you here and found out you were _exactly_ that person now. Of course I fell in love with you all over again.”

“Oh,” is all he says. And then the relief and giddiness starts sinking in and he's laughing, gasping for breath and Clarke is looking at him like he's gone a little mad and maybe he has.

“What?” she asks, but there's a small smile curling the corners of her lips.

“You'd just think we'd be better at this by now,” he tells her.

She rolls her eyes. “I have no idea what gave you that impression,” she responds, and then she kisses him and he loses all the thoughts in his head. Kissing Clarke Griffin feels like coming home. When they pull apart her cheeks are flushed and his chest feels so full it might burst.

She ducks her head against his neck and says, “We _are_ gonna do better this time, aren't we?”

Bellamy smiles into her hair. “It'd be hard to do much worse.”

Clarke swats his arm, but she's laughing, full and joyful, and he thinks, yeah, they'll do better this time around. They already have.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> There are so many things I feel like I need to address so I'm just gonna have to bullet point this.  
> \- I've been really struggling to write lately (which is why there isn't a new chapter of Stars yet, but I am working on it, I promise!) and this was something that just sort of hit me and I had to do it and I wrote it all pretty much in one sitting and I'm not really sure if it's any good, but I needed to get it out. It's also way longer than I intended. I'd totally thought was gonna be like 2 or 3k, but I can never meet those small word count goals, so here we are.  
> \- Ever since I first heard this song, I've felt it just fits Bellamy and Clarke SO MUCH and I've tried to write multiple fics inspired by it and nothing's really fit up until now. The group has said on multiple occasions that the song is about there being people in your life that you can't always be with, but that you hold close and would always be there for it came down to it, and to me, that's Bellamy and Clarke. So, if you haven't heard the song, I HIGHLY suggest you go listen to it. It's Standing By by Pentatonix and it just feels like them to me.  
> \- I made a new Tumblr because my old one has a bunch of my RL friends and I was sort of spamming them with fandom shit they didn't need to see, so this one is completely dedicated to my fandom stuff and it should be good. So, if anyone wants to come hang out with me on Tumblr [THIS](http://while-the-world-collides.tumblr.com/) is my new blog.  
> \- As always, thank you for reading and commenting and just generally being a wonderful, supportive group!


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